The CPBB kicks-off Priority Based Budgeting with the City of Shawnee, Kansas today!

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting
is leading the City of Shawnee through a facilitated exercise to
develop comprehensive definitions for the City's Results. These Results
will define what every community must ask themselves: What are we here to do? See initial Shawnee PBB launch agenda packet here.

Participants in the "brainstorming" exercise will contribute by
expressing all of the many ways that the organization's Results can be
achieved, and then organizing all of those answers into similarly themed
groups that form the basis for each of the Result definitions.

The technique is called Affinity Diagramming - a proven and powerful
method that: a) gathers large and comprehensive amounts of information
about all of the different ways the City¹s Results can be achieved, and
b) does so in an extremely efficient manner that makes the most optimal
use of the participant¹s time while still producing complete
definitions.

City of Shawnee, KS City Hall

Following the exercise, CPBB will produce draft "Result Maps" for each
of the City¹s stated Results. These "Result Maps" provide a simple,
graphic way to organize and articulate the concepts identified in the
facilitated exercise as the definitions around each Result. "Result
Maps" serve as one of the key criteria for program scoring.

Now the City of Shawnee has published the culmination of their work. And by tying the city's work plan to their priority based budget, the City of Shawnee is taking priority based budgeting to new levels! Congratulations City of Shawnee on a superb implementation of priority based budgeting!

Budgets Guided by
Community Values

Over the course of the last year, the
City of Shawnee, Kansas began the Priority Based Budgeting (PBB) process with the Center for Priority Based Budgeting (CPBB). PBB is a process used to understand our larger community
values, and then budget according to those values. This process will enable us
to reassess our priorities and assist us in making sound, long-term funding
decisions. As the PBB staff say, the PBB process provides a new lens for staff
and the Governing Body to review expenditures by continuously focusing on the
results that are most relevant to Shawnee and the programs that influence those
results to the highest possible degree.

What’s Already
Happened?

On April 13, 2013, the Governing Body discussed
community values and the priorities of our community. These priorities - or
Results - were defined by staff and affirmed by the Governing Body. The Results
identified are:

Over the past months, a comprehensive review of existing services, or
‘programs’, was conducted, including allocating costs to each Program (based on
the 2014 Budget). Then, each program was assigned a score based on a systematic
scoring process and weighted on its contribution to desired Results and key
Attributes of the program. To view a list and description of each city program,
please visit our Program Inventorypage.

On May 6, 2014, The Center for Priority Based Budgeting presented the
culmination of all of this work to the Council Committee. To view the
PowerPoint and hear the presentation please visit our Agendas page. The resource allocation diagnostic
tool that was presented will be used by staff and the Governing Body in the
future to look at our Budget through different “lenses.” Please click on the
icon at the top of this page to access the resource allocation diagnostic tool.

The City's Work Planincludes
projects for 2014 and 2015 and ties together the City’s work with PBB as well
as projects that move the City forward in meeting Results.

Jon Johnson and Chris Fabian are pleased to share with you that the Center for Priority Based Budgeting officially opened its office on September 1, 2010, with its main objective being to “lead communities to Fiscal Health and Wellness.”

As most of you know, it was our desire from the very beginning of our partnership to create a not-for-profit environment that could support and sustain our work in not only providing advisory services to local governments across the country but also to find ways to continue our research efforts to better understand the fiscal conditions that are impacting local governments from coast to coast. Utilizing a business development technique found in the private sector, the Center was being “incubated” by another successful not-for-profit organization that also serves local governments. Graduating from the incubator in 2013, CPBB is now working with over 60 organizations who have implemented or are currently implementing the processes and tools of Fiscal Health and Priority Based Budgeting.

As before, we are striving to bring the principles of Fiscal Health and Wellness to all communities by teaching, coaching and guiding them in the development and implementation of our unique, creative and proven tools and techniques. We continue to improve upon our “Fiscal Health Diagnostic Tool”, which provides a quick assessment of any organization’s fiscal health status. We also continue to develop our “Resource Allocation Tool” which provides not only a mechanism to set target budgets based on our Priority Based Budgeting approach, but also serves as a way to depict how well any organization is aligning its resources with the programs and services that the community values. Our work has expanded to now include some interesting and successful citizen engagement opportunities with the communities we are partnering with in this work.

We have included our contact information below and hope that we can continue to reach out to those of you we have worked with in the past to further our research efforts as we continually strive to enhance the Priority Based Budgeting process as well as with the concepts of Fiscal Health and Wellness. We also hope to continue the conversation with those of you who have been following our work and share with you the stories of accomplishment and success from the organizations that have implemented Priority Based Budgeting. Please drop us a line anytime – we’re always glad to hear from you. In the meantime, please update your contact information and when you have the chance, check out our blog site to find out what we’ve been doing since our last conversation with you.